


Petrified

by streetcar_named_desire



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blurryface, Depression, Hallucinations, Loss, M/M, Nightmares, Sadness, Schizophrenia, Self-Harm, i dont have an outline, petrified, this is going to be weird, tyler is sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:31:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8089024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetcar_named_desire/pseuds/streetcar_named_desire
Summary: What if your worst fears came true?What if your mind was working against you?What if...what if you deserved it?





	1. Prologue - he was falling

**Author's Note:**

> hi all! this is my first work on ao3, woo!   
> I thought up this concept this morning, and I'm excited to see all of my vague thoughts become a reality in this fic.  
> I hope that this will be as much fun to read as it is to write :)
> 
> without further ado, here is the prologue!

Josh sat in his bed, unable to fall asleep. It had been at least a week since he had been able to get a full rest, and he felt the weakness that came along with it. He was just so worried. He knew that most of his abundant worries were far beyond his control, but that did nothing to banish them from his mind. They were always there, pricking at his brain like needles. Nowadays they haunted him without release, sticking like cobwebs to the corners of his mind. Now the worries were growing larger, the sense of unease stronger than it had ever been. It licked at his mind like a fire, sharply glowing grey. The flames of fear ate away at his thoughts, reducing them to charred cinders that drifted away like dead leaves, transforming from vibrantly alive butterflies to faded moths.

“What if?” They asked, calling out softly from the depths of his mind. “What if those nightmares came true? It is possible, Josh. It’s more possible than you would like to think…”

Colors flickered in his mind, tiny sprites singing their siren song of fear. They floated through the abyss, creating patterns of purple. He got lost in the bitter trails of the sprites charming their way deeper into his mind, scarring him more and more with every second that passed.

The whispers slowly faded, but not before calling out one last time. “Be careful,” they warned, “be careful.” And then they were gone, receding into nothingness. Cold crystal sweat ran down Josh’s face, and his hands ached from clenching at the bed sheets. These visits were becoming increasingly common, each one adding to his paranoia and his vast collection of worries.

He shivered, and tried to turn off his mind, but that only made it more alive.

It was the nightmares, too. They brought tears to his eyes and threatened him mercilessly. They were so bad that despite how tired he was, he dreaded sleep. Even worse, there were only three or so different nightmares that plagued his existence, repeating until death seemed like the only option.

He thought about Tyler, and how tired he had seemed earlier that week. He last saw him the previous Monday, but they both had too much on their plates to see each other any time more recently. He could tell that this new rockstar lifestyle was taking a toll on Tyler, even though the man would never admit it. It definitely had its upsides, but it also had its many downs.

He thought and thought, unable to stop. There were so many worries that Josh had to account for each night, and it was exhausting to face each what if, but he couldn’t help himself. And then the was the matter of his strange set of recurring nightmares. They were so bad that Josh didn’t even want to sleep anymore. Sleep was for the lucky, and lucky was something that he was not.

Therapy was something he had considered, but only briefly. He had Tyler, and Tyler was all he needed.


	2. This is Karma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josh comes face-to-face with one of his biggest fears, the fact that he might one day lose his best friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER!!***
> 
> Hi! This is the first real chapter of Petrified. Please make sure that you have read the prologue first, it might make some things clearer!  
> Petrified will be updated on either Mondays or Fridays.
> 
> This is unbeta'd.
> 
> Here is chapter two, I hope you like it!

Josh yawned and looked down at his coffee. He felt too nauseous to drink it, despite his exhaustion. Leftover hints of fear still haunted him, and he bit his lip anxiously. They dashed through his half-awake mind, glints of memory piecing together the latest nightmare. It was a bad one, very bad. Josh shuddered just thinking about it. Leftover dregs of dark-purple fear still ate away at his brain, tainting his thoughts with suspicion.

Josh got up, dumping the coffee into the kitchen sink, dull brown contrasting with the shining silver. In his eyes the brown suddenly became blood, dripping and dripping, an endless supply, a lifesource quickly flooding away, dripping, dripping, and Josh was drowning. He fought his way out of his thoughts, and gasped for clean air, a small bead of sweat making its way down his pale cheek. Tears threatened to appear from the void of his blank eyes, but he fought them off with the valor of knights defending their king. He quickly recovered from his flashback to a scene that had only ever existed in his sleeping subconscious mind, and walked toward his bathroom.

On his way down the suffocatingly small hallway, Josh’s phone buzzed, alerting him to a text message. He freed his phone from his pocket, the unease he had been feeling all morning suddenly rearing up in a gigantic wave. He had to close his eyes for a minute and wait for the moment to pass. It finally did, and he turned on his phone, the tiny click echoing in the silence. 

It was a message from Tyler, and Josh smiled softly. Even though he had enough common sense to know that his nightmares weren’t real, it helped to know for sure that Tyler was still alive.

The text was simple, just one word: “josh.”

Josh leaned against the wall as he typed his answer. “yes? what do you need?”

The reply didn’t come immediately, and Josh climbed into the already steaming shower, leaving his phone on the bathroom counter.

The steam quickly fogged up the mirror and the glass of the shower stall, and with his eyes closed, he could almost pretend that he was just a spirit, floating bodyless through life.

The water burned at his skin, and yet it was not quite hot enough. What he needed was for it to burn his soul away, because living like this was getting hard. The colorless suds of Tyler’s favorite soap leisurely floated down Josh’s shiny-slick skin, cruising slowly over rubbed-red skin that he hadn’t scrubbed quite hard enough to free him from his awful shell. What he needed was a shock or an extreme emotion, something to let him know that he was still here, still in the same world. It certainly didn’t feel like the same world.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed, and he couldn’t get out of the shower fast enough. His sodden hair dripped on the lightning-storm-grey tiles, miniature floods. Twinges of foreboding pulled at his gut as he picked up his phone, but he ignored the nagging feeling that something, something, was going to happen.

Josh squinted to read the text, his phone screen foggy. He wiped away the hazy condensation with a still-damp finger, and froze abruptly. His heart stopped as he read the short message. The previously slight sense of foreboding was now magnified, settling like a cinderblock in his stomach. He held his breath as he read the text again and again and again, hoping that the words would have changed, but he was disappointed in each reread. 

“please help me its blurryface,” were the words dancing across the bright phone screen. 

Well, maybe I’m overthinking this. Can this really be as bad as I think? Josh asked himself, but he already knew the answer. All those lunches in the past month when Tyler seemed slightly checked out suddenly made sense. All of those meet-and-greets where he didn’t seem as excited as usual. All of those times when Josh couldn’t find Tyler, and he would be curled up in the corner with red eyes, so very alone. All of those times, and so many more, suddenly made sense, and something clicked in Josh’s mind.

Josh was up and there was his shirt and no no time to dry his hair and pull on his shorts go go go and there was his phone and his keys and a text to Tyler and then he was running, running to the car and he was driving driving driving and he couldn’t go fast enough and - Josh took in a deep breath, and tried to calm down. It was impossible, though, and he knew it. 

The sky was sunny and a cloudless robin’s-egg-blue, like life was taunting him

You know what this is, Josh? This is karma, finally caught up with you. You did this to yourself. You earned this, Josh.

The sprites appeared in his mind like the first few strokes of paint on a blank white canvas, appearing suddenly out of nowhere. Josh gritted his teeth and slammed a palm against the edge of the steering wheel, already becoming more frantic. This is what the sprites did to him. They sent him to Hell and told him he was the only one to blame, not them. No, not those innocent little furies, who were only telling Josh that his time had come, and everything, everything, he had done wrong in his past was coming back to haunt him, and he better be prepared. 

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t prepared, and he never would be, even if he had a million years, and Josh knew it.

He didn’t notice the tears falling from his fragile paper eyes until they were dropping like rain drops onto his shirt, but he didn’t have time to stop and collect himself. No, right now he just had to keep going.  
He flew through the last stop sign on the way to Tyler’s house and earned a storm of honking, but that didn’t matter. In that moment, nothing mattered.

Then he was there, and he was jumping out of the car, keys out and ready. He burst in through the front door, and was hit by the stark white silence of the seemingly empty house.

“Tyler?” Josh called, on the brink of hysteria. “Tyler!” 

Tyler didn’t respond, and he was forced to search for him. He walked through the blank hallways calling Tyler’s name, but was met with no reply. He ran a hand through his still damp hair and anxiously approached the bathroom, nerves thrumming with every step he took. He could feel the steady sense of foreboding still in the pit of his stomach, but it suddenly lifted when he rested his hand on the silver handle of the bathroom door.

Suddenly he was floating. Josh was completely numb, both physically and emotionally. In an instant, all of the tiny little details of his surroundings came sharply into focus; all of the tiny lines of the wood grain of the door, the exact way the light was slanting from the doorway at the other end of the hall.

The door was open. He didn’t remember opening it.

Josh closed his eyes involuntarily, somehow knowing that the sight he was about to see wouldn’t be pretty.

He took another faltering step into the bathroom, fear pricking at his distant senses. Then his eyes were open, and he took in the sorrowful sight that lay before him.

Tyler sat propped up against one wall, looking like a rag doll. His eyes were lightly closed, and he was completely still.

Josh’s heart stopped, and he took a moment to fully comprehend what he was seeing. 

There were little ruby red teardrops of blood peppering his arms, where jagged lines ran down from his shoulders to his wrists, bringing sadness and despair in their wake. More blood was splattered across his body, dried like red freckles on his cheeks.

He looked absolutely broken.

Josh’s heart broke as his eyes moved across his best friend’s body. Suddenly the teal floor was rushing up to meet him, and at the last moment he managed to throw out his arms and stop himself.

Tears streaked silently down Josh’s face, sprinting away from his misty eyes. They dripped off his chin and landed on Tyler’s arm, water mixing with blood in a sick science experiment. 

“Tyler!” Josh shouted with a voice textured with deep sadness, deeper than he had ever felt in his life. It extended down into his core, his heart pumping it into every vein. It radiated through his bones, so deep it was almost painful.

Josh took the other man into his arms and gently rocked him.

“Tyler, s-say something. P-please.” Josh stared at Tyler through the veil of his tears, shaking like San Francisco in 1906.

Tyler’s eyes fluttered open delicately, only managing to stay open for as long as it took to see Josh’s face.

“...J-Josh…” Tyler whispered.

“Oh, Tyler.” Josh sobbed with relief. His body trembled with emotion, cracking under the pressure of the extreme weight of all his emotions piled up in his mind, stacked so high that there was hardly any room for anything else.

“Stay…” Tyler hiccupped, and Josh had never seen him so weak, so vulnerable. Josh gently grasped Tyler’s hand, ignoring the blood that dripped down in a fatal waterfall from his wrist.

“Of course, Tyler. A-anything for you.” 

A few minutes passed, and now Tyler’s eyes were shut and his breathing was unnoticeable, and Josh panicked. He desperately hugged the other man to him, anxiety welling up deep from within him. He sobbed, tears falling down his face and landing in small crystalline droplets on Tyler’s pale cheek. He cried for all the promises that would now be broken, all of those plans that would now fall into oblivion. All of those wasted moments where Josh should have said something, but he didn’t. All of those rare facts that he didn’t know about Tyler Joseph, and now would never know. All of those unfinished songs that now would never be brought magnificently into existence with a shared smile. All of those concerts that had only existed in a daydream. In that moment, all of those were gone. Those tiny things could haunt someone for a lifetime, and Josh now knew that first-hand.

Josh broke down then, tears flowing freely, a storm of sadness sweeping his mind of off its feet. The tears dropped silently, each droplet tearing him apart at the seams. They glittered like diamonds in the fluorescent light, sparkling like the stage lights that neither of them would see again. The thought brought back memories of them mere months ago, when they were just perfect boys with their perfect lies.

“Please stay with me, Tyler. Please stay here, I need you, I n-need you, Tyler, p-please.” Josh could barely speak, but he forced himself to keep talking.

Light slanted in his eyes from a fixture above him, burning brightly. It blinded him to the rest of the world. Right now, this was the only reality. Nothing else mattered. Everyone else was in a different world.

Then Josh could see again, and he could see everything, and it overwhelmed him. The red of the blood on Tyler’s shirt brought him to a different place, a different time. Memories flooded him, rushing over his head. They brought ghosts back to life and clouded his eyes over.

Josh briskly shook his head to clear it. That was a different time, a different him.

“But what if it wasn’t? What if that was him all along?” The ever-present sprites chanted, flying just out of reach of his outstretched arms, trying to battle them away. Away from this life that they had no business in, now that it was finally going right. He had finally been able to transfer his life to the right side of the tracks, the side that he had never really seen since he was a little kid. 

But now the sprites beckoned, trying to get him to go back to the wrong side. Josh tried to resist them, but they were so convincing…

The light changed, and it caught something silver on the ground with its wayward beams. 

A razor. 

This was a fork in the road, Josh realized. One path led back to the side that the spirits were beckoning, and the other led to the life he dreamt of. He barely had the strength to chose the right side to walk on, but somehow he managed. With unsure footsteps, he slowly walked to the right side of the path, ignoring the magnetic pull of the other.

Suddenly sirens flashed and wailed outside, disrupting his thoughts, causing them to disappear like fog on a hot day. Someone threw open the door to the house, banging it against the inside wall, just more damage to an already broken down household. 

Footsteps hit hard against the wood of the hallways, pounding in time with Josh’s heart. They drew closer and closer, and finally became people standing in a cluster around the bathroom door. With cold mountain eyes the color of diamond (and just as hard), they took in the situation, calculating it in the computers that were their brains. Then the four of them crowded into the bathroom, filling it with voices and noise and fear and orders. They were shouting, voices clipping at the thick air like scissors, but Josh didn’t take any of it in. They drew even closer, and Josh flinched back, away from their controlled idea of safety, away from all of their demands and pointless restrictions, but their hands grabbed, grabbed like crabs, their claws extending toward him. They clutched at him, trying to pull him away from Tyler, but Josh sat there, a rock.

Couldn’t they see? He was going to stay with Tyler until they both drew their last breaths. Why couldn’t they understand that Tyler needed him, that Tyler would want him to stay?

But they didn’t see, they didn’t understand, and they snatched his best friend away from him like paper in the wind. Their eyes stared coldly at him, and all he could hear was the thumping of his heart in his ears.

Josh desperately followed them outside to the waiting ambulance. At first he couldn’t make the words work, and he didn’t know which sounds meant which ideas. Then he pieced them together like a fancy jigsaw, 2,000+ pieces, barely fitting together, eventually assembling some sort of stilted picture. Josh told them that he had to come along, that he was Tyler’s best friend, but the words sounded strange and nonsensical in his dry mouth.

The metallically similar people rolled their square eyes and pulled him up into the ambulance, and drove off with a hum.


End file.
